With the signing of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals and the Green Deal to achieve climate neutrality, the European Union has placed environmental and social sustainability at the centre of its policies. For this reason, the European Commission adopted the ‘Action Plan on Financing Sustainable Growth’ in March 2018, defining a global strategy for sustainable finance.
In this context, the Taxonomy plays a key role in translating the EU’s climate and environmental objectives into criteria for specific economic activities for investment purposes (Article 1, EU Regulation 2020/852, 18th June 2020), and indeed establishes and maintains clear criteria for determining what it means to be ‘environmentally sustainable’ in terms of making a substantial contribution and doing no significant harm.
The Taxonomy Regulation defines six environmental objectives:
Therefore, an economic activity is defined as sustainable from an environmental point of view if it:
The verification of the taxonomy alignment declaration of one or more investments is a systematic, independent and documented process designed to issue an opinion on the completeness, accuracy and verifiability of the declaration of alignment of one or more investments of an asset under the criteria defined by the Taxonomy in relation to the environmental objectives for which the delegated acts have been published. This service also includes the verification of the DNSH (Do No Significant Harm) analysis and compliance with social and governance guarantees.
RINA has years of experience in sustainability, is recognised by the owners of the main certification and inspection schemes and is accredited by several accreditation bodies.
